


365 on Leap Years

by bocje_ce_ustu



Series: Spizzichi e Bocconi (Tumblr Writing, Fills and Flashfics) [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Erik is Crushing Harder than a 12-year Old Girl, Erik's Blue Dress, F/M, Genderswap, Genderswapped Erik, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Rape Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5507594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bocje_ce_ustu/pseuds/bocje_ce_ustu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr takes his chances with womanizer Charles Xavier.<br/>Written for Notte Bianca XX on sushi_precotto's prompt "AU in which one day a year, every person genderswaps for twenty-four hours".</p>
            </blockquote>





	365 on Leap Years

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, guys! There are some mentions, although very brief, of sexual harassment and rape culture. If that triggers you, please don't read. (But if you do read and feel more tags are needed, please tell me.)
> 
> Written for Notte Bianca XX on sushi_precotto's prompt "AU in which one day a year, every person genderswaps for twenty-four hours".  
> I cleaned up some typos and mistakes from the original version you can find [here](http://maridichallenge.livejournal.com/98311.html?thread=7369223#t7369223).  
> I'm not really satisfied with how this turned out in terms of depth. Mostly I wanted to write something happy and sweet for a change, so I hope I have succeeded at least in that.  
> Concrit is love.

Shaving is definitely the worst part of it all, Erik decides on his twenty-ninth, after waking up to a reddish, hideous mop of hair on his legs. Her legs. Whatever. Not that the hair isn’t there every day, you know. It’s just that every _other_  day it’s perfectly fine to have it. He understands women’s struggles a bit more every year.  
  
Actually, he must admit menstrual days are even worse (he distinctly remembers the thirteenth time, when his final tests went to hell as he panicked over his blood-stained chair thinking he was dying by some internal injury), but, fortunately for him, they’re few and far between, and not always followed by the gut-wrenching pain that makes Raven’s insults so colourful once a month (and bless Raven and her full stock of painkillers when they do).  
  
Apart from that, Erik finds his female days quite fine, recently. While they seemed like an utter nuisance when he was younger and girls felt a whole universe apart, he’s been finding a few perks.  
  
For one, he gets to wear airy dresses in summer and lounge in his mother’s old mauve nightgown in winter, breathing in mothballs and melancholy. He also feels freer to indulge in make-up experiments without getting as many malicious looks; and well, if he does get them, for one reason or another (he still remembers one night around his twenties, the hungry leer on the man’s face and his insistent touches), there’s nothing a bit of Krav Maga cannot fix (and what a relief he’d felt when the man had been too surprised to react fast enough).  
  
Sometimes he even awakes to longer, thicker hair, and he’s taken quite a liking to braiding it, combing it into a high ponytail or just letting it flow down his shoulders (winter swapdays with long hair are the best, especially if they come with a vicious wind).  
  
And then there’s Charles. Charles with his impossibly red lips and Photoshop eyes and that curious hint of red on his chin when he forgoes shaving for a couple of days. Charles who offers relaxed, charming smiles and purrs ridiculous pick-up lines to every girl stepping into the club. Charles who drunk-kissed him, two years ago, telling him he’d never been more beautiful.  
  
Erik eyes critically the blue party dress hanging from the wardrobe handle. It’s an outrageous, glittery thing Charles absolutely loves. Or loves Erik in, anyway. The plan is – has been for about two years, since last year Erik woke up swapped during his two-week seminar on Engineering and Safety Measures in Havana, cursing his bad luck – to wear the dress, catch Charles’ eye and snog him stupid.  
  
There’s only a tiny little problem with the plan still nagging him, namely, what if Charles remembers kissing him, two years ago? They’ve never talked about it, so it could either be that Charles doesn’t remember a thing or that he is too ashamed to admit it has ever happened. He has a reputation to uphold, after all. (Though Erik is quite sure half of the club saw that, for that matter.)  
  
So, case a): Charles doesn’t remember. Erik can walk up to him tonight, pretending he’s just the average girl caught by Charles’ charms, and do whatever the hell Charles Xavier does with a one-night-stand picked up at the bar. A little Howard Stark-ish, but Erik isn’t going to miss out on a chance like that. He has just to make sure to leave before Charles wakes up in the morning, which is easy enough, given Raven and Hank’s account on that matter.  
  
Definitely trickier is case b), in which Charles does remember but chose not to address the issue anyway. Maybe, a little voice seethes from the back of Erik’s head, the kiss doesn’t even count as an issue to Charles. Maybe he just dismissed it as some kind of alcohol-induced shenanigan he thought best not to bring up later to spare Erik an embarrassment. That would be a very Charles-y thing to do. But the thing is, if Charles remembers, he remembers what Erik looks like as a woman too, and there’s no way Erik will be able to woo him like that. Which also implies that the blue dress is out of the question.  
  
Maybe he should just ask Raven for one of her dresses. No, actually, dress or not dress, Charles would recognize him anyway. _So let’s hope it’s case a) or else I’m screwed. That is, not screwed. Oh well._  
  
“Hey, Erik!” comes Raven’s voice from the hallway; light, swift footsteps approaching the door to his room. “You coming toni—whoa, somebody’s going vicar-hunting tonight.” When he looks up to glare at her, she’s leisurely propped up against the doorframe, looking at his reflection on the wall mirror with raised eyebrows and an amused quirk to her lips.  
  
“Charles mustn’t know any of this”, he growls, except it comes out as a strangely high-pitched drawl. Calibrating the timbre always takes a while.  
  
Raven looks like she’s trying hard not to laugh. “Really, baby, and here I thought you couldn’t get any cuter than that.”  
  
“I mean it, Raven.”  
  
She raises her hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Want some help with the make up?”

  
***

  
The music is too loud, the crowd undulating like a tidal wave under the flashing lights. Erik’s eyes follow Raven as she quickly disappears, swallowed in the throng on her way to the bar. He takes a few minutes to steel himself before he dives in after her. Tonight he’s not Raven’s friend and flatmate. Tonight he’s just a girl out for a night of fun. Tomorrow tonight won’t matter at all. He breathes in and breaches the crowd.  
  
When he reaches the bar, Raven’s already engrossed in a discussion about stilettos and back-pain with some lean, dark-skinned man with a pair of butterfly wings tattooed on his shoulders and arms. He pointedly ignores the look she casts his way as he hops onto a stool at the counter.  
  
“Hey, gorgeous.” As though drawn by the blinding sparkles projected by his dress, Charles makes his way towards him on the other side of the counter. “What can I make you?” He looks relaxed, exuding that kind of confidence that girls around here apparently go crazy about and that Erik finds both amusing and utterly unnerving. All right, case a) it is.  
  
“A gin and tonic, will you?”  
  
“Right away.” He turns around and begins puttering about behind the counter, glancing at him from over his shoulder from time to time.  
  
“So you’re new in town?”, he asks, setting the gin and tonic in front of Erik a few moments later.  
  
“Kinda”, he answers, evasive. “Let’s just say this isn’t my average Saturday.”  
  
“A shame for the male and female population alike, no doubt”, Charles says, mirth-filled eyes peering up from his lashes. It takes a while for Erik to realize this is probably the part when you’re _supposed_ to blush. He shrugs it off. The lights are too dim to make that out, anyway.  
  
“I guess.”  
  
“Tell me, then”, Charles goes on, blatantly ignoring a woman who’s been waving a hand at him for a good few minutes, trying to catch his eye, “what’s your average Saturday like?”  
  
“Trying to forget that places like this – where you get hit on by a man if your skirt is deemed short enough – exist”, he seethes, trying to convey all of his frustration in a statement that pretty much reflects the opposite of his true situation. These words, at least, are bound to have some effect on Charles.  
  
Which they do. Charles bursts out laughing, earning a dark, somewhat exasperated look from Logan, his fellow bartender, who passes him by to go to the rescue of the waving woman.  
  
“You have a really strange way of flirting”, Charles is saying, covering his laughing mouth in a failed attempt at politeness.  
  
“You have a really strange way of detecting flirting”, Erik rebukes sourly.  
  
Charles seems to regain some control over himself. “That wasn’t you flirting?” His face quickly turns from disbelieving to apologetic. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, love, but the thing you did with your eyelashes… I was so sure—“  
  
“What thing?”  
  
“The _thing_ ”, Charles insists, some measure of mirth coming back to his features as he tries to mimic such _thing_ with his hands over his own eyes.  
  
“That’s blinking”, Erik says, plastering what he hopes is a very serious face instead of the laugh that is threatening to bubble up from his throat. “Everyone does it every few seconds.”  
  
“So that’s not flirting.”  
  
“I’m afraid not.”  
  
“So you don’t flirt.”  
  
“I never said that”, Erik chides, raising an eyebrow. “I said I wasn’t, I didn’t say I never do. I can flirt if I choose to.”  
  
“Apart from the completely involuntary twitch to your eyes”, Charles fills in, completely uncalled for.  
  
“Which is called blinking.”  
  
Charles waves a hand apologetically. “Of course, of course.”  
  
Erik sips the last of his drink and puts the glass back down on the counter. This is it. “Do you want me to show you?”  
  
Charles furrows his brow, puzzled. “How you blink?”  
  
Erik rolls his eyes. “How I flirt.”  
  
Charles shrugs, saying, “Only if you deem me a man prone to hit on a woman if he deems her skirt to be short enough.”  
  
“Very well. Bring me another round then.” He nudges at his glass, which Charles picks up and swiftly replaces. “You do have a strange way of flirting”, Erik hears him mutter as he dumps the bottle of gin in a bin under the counter.  
  
“Let’s hear it, then.” Charles props himself on his elbows and looks up at him expectantly. “Flirt with me.”  
  
“Well, first of all,” Erik leans his own elbows on the counter, levelling his gaze to Charles’, “it’s very important that your target isn’t aware of your flirting right from the beginning.” He slowly leans closer over the counter, eyes never leaving Charles’, “You have to lure him out slowly, making him feel like you could be slipping away anytime if he’s not fast enough, clever enough to catch you.”  
  
“So you were flirting”, Charles murmurs, somewhat entranced either by Erik’s voice, the close proximity or both. Erik has to smother the frustration welling up in his belly at how this seems so easy when he’s a woman.  
  
“Then you pull away”, and at this point he physically pulls away, putting a considerable distance in-between and nailing his own elbows at the very edge of the counter. Charles seems to be able to breathe again. So far so good. Erik goes on, “You’re in charge”, he says, painfully slowly. “You’re the one who makes the call.”  
  
Charles gazes at him as if he were the most beautiful thing in the world. Which is upsetting, really, because Erik knows that look, it’s the one Charles drops on every girl he meets. And that’s exactly what Erik is, isn’t he? Another meaningless hook-up. But if he can never be more than that, well, he’ll take what he can.  
  
“So if you think”, Erik says, slowly drawing closer again, “he is worth your time…” He lets the sentence hanging, feeling Charles’ warm breath on his skin, revelling in that kind of intimacy for an instant before he cups Charles’ cheeks and holds him in place as he closes up the distance between them. Charles’ hands creep up on his face, holding him close, as if Erik’s going to go anywhere anytime soon.  
  
“Erik”, Charles breathes out when they part, and oh, how come Charles’s calling out his name? “Erik, love, as much as I truly appreciate the dress, there’s no need for all of this.”  
  
His name sounds so eerie on Charles’ tongue it takes a while to put all the pieces together again. When he does, Erik staggers back. “You remember—”  
  
Charles reaches for one of his hands over the counter, holding firmly on it when he grasps it. “You never mentioned it, I thought I’d made you uncomfortable—”  
  
Erik shakes his head in disbelief. “I thought _you_ didn’t want to talk about it—”  
  
“And you never talk to me, how am I supposed to know what you’re thinking? I can’t exactly read your mind, now, can I?”  
  
“Wait— wait a minute, does this mean—“  
  
“It means you’re no less striking to me on the other 364 days of the year.” Charles pauses, an unconvinced tilt of an eyebrow. “365 on leap years.”  
  
“But I thought—“ but that sounds just stupid, right now. He stares into Charles’ eyes, not quite sure what to make of it all. Luckily enough for him, Charles looks like he knows _exactly_ what to do. “Oh, come on here, you silly, silly man”, he says, and drags him down across the counter for another kiss.

  
***  
 

His head throbs and a faint sense of nausea sloshes around in his stomach, not to mention his aching bladder. He’s getting too old for this. The first thing he registers after that, scratching his chin and finding the beard is back, is that he’s not in his own bed. And that there’s a lean body lazily rolling on the other side, bedsheets not quite covering its upper part which… is definitely female.  
  
_Shit._ What the hell did he do last night? He was pretty sure he and Charles… The hell with it, of course he must have dreamt that. Alright, he’d better get up and make himself presentable so he can excuse himself as soon as the poor girl wakes up…  
  
…which is pretty much happening now.  
  
A pair of larger-than-life blue eyes flutters open, slowly focusing on him as a drowsy smile takes over the lovely, if a bit big-nosed, face. “Erik? What’s with that fa—“, she stops in her tracks. “Oh, don’t tell me.”  
  
“Charles”, Erik realizes suddenly, and cringes a little when the word comes out very much like a question.  
  
“Charles”, the girl nods, a familiar, vibrant quality to the unfamiliar timbre of her voice. “So what do you think?”, Charles adds, sitting up and straightening his spine to better show off his newly-acquired figure with the complete lack of modesty that must run in the family.  
  
Erik fights the blush that’s creeping up his face under Charles’ amused scrutiny. He notices he’s never answered Charles’ question when the other man wriggles his legs under the bedsheets in discomfort. “Oh, well, this is awkward.”  
  
_Oh, no. No no no no no._ Now Charles thinks he doesn’t like him that way. “No, I didn’t mean— I mean, you caught me off-guard.” That doesn’t sound too good either. “Thing is, I’ve never thought about you like this. I mean, the she-you.” His eyes fix on the round, freckled face staring straight at him. “But it’s a part of who you are, so of course I like it.”  
  
Charles seems to relax at that, but after a while he scowls, shaking his head. “I even thought I’d try to win you over by coming to you like this, but it seems you beat me to it.”  
  
“I doubt you’d ever do that.”  
  
“Do you? I would. I totally would.”  
  
Erik shakes his head. “You’d feel like you’ve cheated. You’re too high-and-mighty to do that.” He leans in closer to Charles and takes hold of his hands. Charles’ eyes crinkle.  
  
“Unlike someone else?”  
  
“Unlike someone else”, Erik says, and bends over to kiss him. It’s like last night in reverse, highlighted by Charles’ giggles at every scrape of beard he feels on his skin.  
  
“Groovy”, Charles whispers in his mouth.  
  
“I’m not hearing this”, Erik replies, and topples him over.

  
  
[fin]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [365 on Leap Years (Leapt Three Years Forward Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11302632) by [widgenstain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/widgenstain/pseuds/widgenstain)




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